In a previous post on the CoLab, we highlighted the channels that make up the Cooperation Laboratory. The CoLab is a hub of activities, where each channel functions independently with leaders and scribes. Most members of the CoLab are on their way to becoming knowledgeable in Rholang as RNode runners and dApp developers. Bouties for October include issues on the bounty system and direct sponsor payments.
Two channels were added to the CoLab in October, BYOID and RBox.
BYOID (Bring Your Own Identity)
The BYOID Cooperative is an informal networking association of individuals spawning various BYOID cooperatives and other organizations employing self-sovereign identity. The members obey cooperative principles in various jurisdictions and recognize each other’s membership without any global legal entity governing the association.
The aim of the association is to foster trusting self-sovereign identities across organizations, enabling trustworthy pseudo-anonymous identity and reputation at scale from the bottom up. It is intended to enable cooperation at scale by developing consensus across organizations using interoperable decentralized cooperation processes and tools.
We all have many accounts on many systems. Each is an identity persona we create but may be controlled by others who have their own interests in mind. Our identity includes much more than our credentials, public keys, and social media handles. It includes all that is known about us. We can own our own identities; the Bring Your Own Identity Cooperative aims to make that a reality by our cooperation.
The BYOID seeks to address the following questions:
What if
- You could prove your identity once instead of to each site you visit?
- You could develop a trustworthy anonymous identity online that is good everywhere for all your persona?
- You could manage your identity and other personal information resources yourself with proven privacy?
- Instead of using insecure email, chat, and social networks, everyone could use emerging decentralized social networking with proven security and privacy?
- Instead of a “To” list, you have a “who needs to know?” and “who is allowed to see?” seeding new BYOID identities from whom permission will be requested when you share each other’s information resources. You then become BYOID co-operators strengthening each other’s identity.
Candidates for connected trusted organizational identities currently include RChain Co-op, Holochain, DAOstack The Digital Life Collective, Sovrin, and Inrupt. The BYOID members had a reboot meeting on the 9th October, 2018 to re-strategize on the best way forward for the cooperative.
How to participate in BYOID
- Register on the BYOID.net website
- Join the BYOID Mattermost chat, say hello and start a conversation, help guide a channel
- Join our weekly meeting at 11:00 AM ET Saturdays
- Report your activities in the project log, github issues, and social ledger (/dig)
- Add questions and answers below and to the FAQ
- Become a director or steward—watch the video below for more information
RBox, RStick (USB) and RKit
This is a turnkey RChain node pre-sold and preloaded with a stake to be self-funded. It is being considered as a means of seeding a pool of personal validators managed by the RChain Co-op. If you had an RBox, RStick or RKit, you could join an RChain validator pool; your seniority and transaction fees would more than cover the cost. Buying RHOCs to stake now (with RHOC or dollars) is an opportunity for people to make good use of their RHOC. For those who do no own RHOC, this is a painless way to attain it at a great value and be part of a network we all own and run collectively.
Holochain made over $1M on the presale of holoports; in some ways, the RBox is even more compelling. It creates a shard of personal validators to prove the economics and bootstrap major validators interest. RBox is just one of several efforts to get validators. It is a proof of concept that is a maximally decentralized network of plug-and-play personal nodes managed by the co-op that can meet our short-term needs.
October Highlights from the CoLab Channels
On SysAdmin
This channel is the IT department for services offered cooperatively using shared resources. Community-managed services are those managed by more than one member and added to the community as a shared resource. These managed services include:
- Node applications
- Bounty dashboard (rchain-tools)
- Rewards staging
- GraphQL
- RHO-bot (kycbot) CoLab discord server
- RChain-invoice staging
- Identity springboard
- MySQL database
- RNode-bob
- Run RNode as a service
- Run testnet
- Invoices.rchain.coop
- Support rchain-invoice production
- Simplified invoice generation for members
On Rholang
The Rholang channel is also a thriving channel. Here members are able to send and receive messages to other channels through smart contracts. The Rholang language is an interesting an easy to learn the language. The activities treated this month were:
- Creation of simple map Rholang contract
- Testing Rholang contracts on Cryptofex
- Rholang key value contract
The Rholang Office hours are held twice every week on Tuesdays and Fridays at 4 pm EST. Check out the Rholang tutorial for more info
On Video-Colab
The Video-Colab is a video library which takes care of managing and indexing of videos. This includes the Rholang tutorials, member meetings, work-study sessions, and video summary articles.
- A video tutorial on how to run RChain RNode and Cryptofex on Ubuntu on Windows 8/10 with VirtualBox
- A total of 5 videos including workstudies and member meetings were indexed this month
On Rholang-JS
An API for dApp frontends to communicate with the RChain blockchain
Some of the related projects include
A minimal RChain-based dApp game that uses RChain-API.
- RChain-dbr
A web-of-trust based distributed budgeting and rewards dApp.
A chrome extension for generating client-side signatures akin to Metamask node-client.
RNode-runners / validators
Here members write, run, and deploy Rholang smart contracts and also propose blocks to the blockchain network. For more information on setting up your environment to run RNode, watch this tutorial:
The Genesis Ceremony involves a group of validators seeking to create a shard in the network (see Shards in RChain). See the Genesis Protocol guide to creating an RChain network, the guide is aimed at
- Providing guidance for validators aiming to create their own shard
- Assisting node testers to create their own bootstrap network
Join the RNode Office hours in CoLab every Thursdays at 4 pm EST to participate.
Tampa Bay Shards Collective
The Tampa Bay Shard Collective, or TBShard, is being created for the initial purpose of doing RChain node validation cooperatively and to promote RChain and its application in the Tampa Bay area. It was conceived in work study and solidified in the Tampa RChain Meetup Oct 30, 2018.
Most of the activities in the channels take place during CoLab workstudies on Mondays and Tuesdays at 4 pm and Thursdays at 4 pm EST. To Participate:
- Get a GitHub account
- Log your activities in RChain Members
- Join the CoLab Channel on Discord